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Monday, October 15, 2012

My New Favorite Toy

The other day, in the midst of making my banana ice cream for my toddler (I promise I will share the easiest recipe in the world with you very soon!) My blender decided to die. . . It made this awful grinding noise and started emitting a terrible burnt plastic odor. Although I am sure it will work for a few more blends, I am too scared to touch it again. I really don't want to clean up the mess after it's final fail! Soo . . We did some research this time around.

We don't like spending money that we know is going to be wasted, really I just don't like spending money but that's beside the point. I figured buying another cheapo blender really would accomplish nothing but waste in the end. Even though a 3 year life is amazing for a $20.00 blender, if we spend more and buy quality, we won't need to replace it as often (if ever) and that is much better all around. No extra waste, no extra spending long term, and with the tool we want better results. Note: I said the tool we want. . .

I have been researching for months on blenders. The pro's and con's of high powered blenders, brands and price comparison's, durability, on and on and on. The blender I settled on is a Blendtec. They work great, have a good quality reputation, can do everything I would ask of a blender and their customer service is friendly. The problem: they start at around 350 and right now we can barely spare 50! I cringe at the thought of buying a lesser product to replace it later, but 350 is just not in the budget! and who knows how long it would take to come up with that kind of money! Plus we're in the midst of our canning season and we use the blender a lot!

Recently, I have been hearing a ton about immersion or 'stick' blenders. They are compact, handheld, mini blenders with oodles of possibilities. We would want one of these anyways eventually, but just how many possibilities are there? Could we use one of these instead of a traditional blender? We decided to give it a try. In my usual stickler style, I decided we must buy a quality stick blender not just any old thing to test. I saw a Kitchenaid at Target and instantly I was hooked. I love Kitchenaid products, they work well and have awesome customer service! I bought it, took it home and to my dismay, the item I purchased, was used. It had been used, returned, and reshelved. I resolved to return it and replace it with an identical, unused one. Then I saw the booklet that showed the Kitchenaid Hand Blender product line.

They have a whole attachment series for these handy tools that could replace 2 other small appliances I own! The stick blender itself, the whisk attachment to replace our hand mixer and a chopper (essentially a mini food processor). So now to make a loooong story short, we bought this one:

At $100 it was a bit more than I wanted to spend, however, I love it! It blends fruit for smoothies beautifully and I'm coming up with hundreds of new recipe's to test including homemade mayonnaise! And as a bonus I get to pass along three small appliances that took up tons of space in my cupboards, but were pretty well necessity in our kitchen!

I promise to share in the future how well it works and if I indeed decide that it will permanently replace a full size blender. But for now it seems to work great!